What's wrong with a closed format for multimedia? If the company goes
out of business, someone else will take it's place. At least we have a
few de-facto players and not a player from each multimedia house.
Imagine what a mess that would be! A WB player, a Paramount player, a
Dreamworks player, a Sony Player, a Fox player, Lions Gate player, etc...
People want 'pretty' sites and flash accomplishes that. Deveopers like
flash because it's write once, and placement is exact on all platforms.
People with money pay for 'pretty' sites because people like pretty
sites and that's over 80% of the web population. There is no solution
available for a devopler to write a pretty multimedia site in an open
format because none exist. I wish it did. So for now, we're stuck for
wishing for proprietary players for Linux.
As harsh as this sounds, business owners who want a multimedia site
really don't care about the 30% global population they're missing. They
see a computer purchase as an appliance so everybody must have a
computer just like them because Fry's has 2 aisles of the same type of
computer, Best Buy has 3 aisles, Circuit City has a corner of the store
dedicated to 'computer' purchases, Dell has a ton of commercials so
there must be something there. IE is just a web browser (to them, not a
doorway for exploits as it is to us) and it plays flash out of the box
so if they pay for a site to be developed, it really only has to work on
their system and it work for everyone else. It's up to the developer to
convince the owner of better formats.
Your next savvy owner who wants streaming media will be aware of
Quicktime, Real, and WMV. The owner with the Home Theatre system will
most likely go with quality and choose Quicktime over WMV. Really from
waht I've seen, the only reason people pick WMV is that the server admin
is a MS fan and think's it's cool or the owner is hoodwinked by the MS
propganda. What pray tell is the alternative to any of those players?
Flash.
There isn't a developer tool that is free (beer or speech) that can
handle the demand for today's multimedia needs.
Joseph Sinclair wrote:
>ARGHHH!
>
>Sorry, had to do that ;).
>
>Flash is a binary, proprietary, closed (mostly), non-free format with
>the only player that generally works being non-free software. About
>half the Linux world cannot (easily) install Flash (including me).
>There are no guarantees that Flash players will be easily available in
>the future. Flash is not accessible to persons with disabilities (the
>open alternative, SVG, is). Flash is susceptible to several very nasty
>exploits, and there's no effective way to filter those out without
>removing all Flash (SVG is readable by scanners, so exploits could be
>filtered without eliminating all content, and the code is viewable, so
>it's hard to hide what's being done). If you want "pretty" and
>interactive sites, you'll have to deal with Flash for now, but let the
>site owners know that you would much prefer SVG content, and cheer on
>the Mozilla developers working to bring SVG to Firefox 1.1.
>
>I agree that Quicktime, Real, and WMV formats are problems. But the
>better solution is to demand open formats (like OGG containers and
>Vorbis sound with Theora video), not ask for a different proprietary format.
>
>The flash file extension is .SWF for "ShockWave Flash", Flash was
>originally a faster, lighter, simpler ShockWave format that ended up
>replacing it's "parent" (as Don states below).
>
>There are several other options for multimedia on Linux besides MPlayer,
>they just don't handle proprietary formats. Again, the better solution
>is to let the website operators know that they are alienating just over
>30% of the global population by using these formats, and they should
>look into open formats as a means to grow their base market. Pointing
>out that the open formats work better on the new Firefox browser they
>keep hearing about won't hurt either.
>
>Just my little rant about multimedia on the net.
>
>==Joseph++
>
>Don Calfa wrote:
>
>
>
>>Flash is authored with Macromedia Flash
>>Shockwave is authored with Macromedia Director.
>>Director and Authorware is authored with Macromedia Director and
>>Authorware.
>>
>>Director hasn't had a new player in about 4-5 years.
>>Most of what makes Shockwave different from Flash has been
>>incorporated into the more recent Flash releases since the flash
>>player is so light weight.
>>Flash 7 is more like Shockwave than Flash 5.
>>
>>The older shockwave files aren't backwards compatible with the newer
>>flash players unless the original content provider does an upgrade
>>which is highly unlikely
>>
>>I wish:
>>
>>Apple would release a 'certified' Quicktime player/plugin for Linux
>>Flash become the de-facto standard for streaming media.
>>
>>Although _we_ can get mplayer to work, all it is is really a hack and
>>it'll never make it mainstream because of licensing.
>>Flash and Real are the only alternatives for mainstream multimedia for
>>Linux at the moment and Flash is pretty consistent.
>>
>>Glitch wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>Well just for my two cents when I click on the file using Firefox 1.0
>>>under win2k it says that it is a shockwave flash Object and wants to
>>>use a shockwave player to access it... But I don't know if that makes
>>>it a shockwave file or not.
>>>
>>>On 4/19/05, Bryan.ONeal@asu.edu <Bryan.ONeal@asu.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>Well, at least I was not the only one who was thinking shockwave
>>>>when I saw
>>>>.swf Though it makes me wounder more why the did not work on my
>>>>FC2 box but
>>>>some flash sites did...
>>>>
>>>>Sigh, it is times like this I am glad to say, what do I know I'm
>>>>just an
>>>>accountant ;)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>
>
>
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